StrengthsFinder: The T+S+K Formula

They say good things always come in threes, so I can’t resist the urge to post a third entry related to how to apply one’s StrengthsFinder assessment results effectively in a career transition scenario.  As for those of you out there who AREN’T proponents of the “Now, Discover Your Strengths” methodology, please bear with us, and don’t worry, I’ve got plenty of more “mainstream” blog postings coming soon!

The aspect of the StrengthsFinder tool that is rattling around in my brain today, however, is the importance of understanding the differences between an actual “strength” and the component parts that make one up.  To be honest, I had forgotten this distinction entirely, myself, until I picked up and read the NDYS book again the other day for the fourth time.  Somehow, over the years, I had fallen into the habit of giving the label “strengths” to the five results one receives from the book’s signature assessment test.  As it turns out, this is not technically accurate according to my recent refresher course.  What the StrengthsFinder test instead purports to reveal are not your strengths, per se, but the dominant underlying talents that play a key role — along with the ingredients of skills and knowledge — in forming your core personal and professional strengths.

Confused yet?  Don’t worry, it all will click, eventually!  And in case it may help, let me cite the formal definitions from the book.  Talents are “the ways in which you most naturally think, feel, and behave as a unique individual” whereas Strengths reflect your ability “to consistently provide near-perfect performance in a specific activity.”

Once you’ve got the hang of these distinctions, you’re ready to seriously contemplate the book’s magic formula, which is Talent + Skills + Knowledge = Strength.  Understanding this formula, and its implications, is the most powerful part of the assessment for those who are unemployed.  Why?  Because a serious job hunter needs to recognize that Strengths are what companies are looking for in professional-level candidates.  Not just Talent.  Not just Skills.  Not just a college degree or a smattering of relevant Knowledge.  Strengths are the things that actually produce profitable results and get things accomplished for the company, which is why employers are being so annoyingly picky and subjecting job applicants to so many levels of scrutiny these days.  Employers are just not terribly interested right now in hiring somebody who might be able to solve a problem in 30, 60, or 90 days down the road, just like you wouldn’t be interested in hiring a plumber who could fix your leaky pipes “someday” or an accountant who “might” be able to prepare your tax return.   Employers are trying to track down individuals who possess the precise mix of Talent, Skills, and Knowledge (HR types usually label these items Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities) that will allow them to walk into the office and start knocking their assigned tasks out of the park, from day one.

So if you’re planning to incorporate the StrengthsFinder into your job search, in a significant way, I’d suggest you practice breaking down your key work-related capabilities (aka Strengths) into their corresponding Talent, Skill, and Knowledge elements.  Engaging in this exercise will not only help you understand why you’re so good at certain things, on a granular level, but will also help you package/sell your competencies to employers in a highly persuasive way.

Here are a few examples I whipped up on the fly that demonstrate what this would look like:

Strength: Planning a profitable retail product assortment
Talents:  Any could help, but Analytical, Strategic, Futuristic, and Achiever might be a particularly strong fit
Skills: Microsoft Excel usage, as well as the ability to perform complex pricing and forecasting calculations
Knowledge: Understanding of retail/wholesale concepts, inventory management methods, product sourcing channels, SKUs, and modern merchandising techniques

Strength: Building and managing a high-performance sales team
Talents: Any could help, but Maximizer, Developer, Consistency, and Individualization might be a particularly strong fit
Skills: Sales training, performance management, meeting facilitation, expertise in effective negotiating and deal-closing techniques
Knowledge: Deep understanding of the company’s products/services, competitive positioning, target markets, and industry niche

Strength: Leading an organizational turnaround
Talents: Any could help, but Command, Competition, Positivity, and Achiever might be a particularly strong fit
Skills: Financial analysis, strategic planning, investor relations, process improvement, design and communication of restructuring initiatives
Knowledge: MBA or General Management background, industry knowledge, understanding of change management principles

Strength: Repairing automobiles
Talents: Any could help, but Input, Context, Arranger, and Deliberative might be a particularly strong fit
Skills: Usage of various shop tools and diagnostic systems, ability to read engine schematics
Knowledge: Understanding of automobile engines and components, troubleshooting procedures, safety precautions

Or if you want to attack the issue from another angle, try this approach on for size.  Pick some common career avenues — or a list of occupations that interest you — and ask yourself: “Based on the five natural talents that the StrengthsFinder test indicates that I possess, what kind of (insert job title) would I be? What kind of accountant?  What kind of salesperson?  What kind of social media consultant, purchasing analyst, operations manager, or hairdresser?”  Boatloads of career-related wisdom could come tumbling out of this exercise, should you devote the time to trying it out.

At the end of the day, sure, the picky naming conventions I’ve cited in this post may not really matter in some respects.  In casual usage, for example, almost everybody would understand the meaning to be the same if I were to say that I have an Analytical “strength” versus an Analytical “talent”.  Where I think these distinctions become increasingly significant, however, is when you apply them to picking career paths and figuring out how to best sell yourself to organizations.  As discussed in yesterday’s post, if you consistently find yourself trying to get employers interested in your Talents, versus your Strengths, you’re going to be in for an uphill battle.  “So what?” the employer thinks to themselves.  “So you’re empathic.  Or analytical.  Or comfortable around other people in casual situations.  Why should I care about this, exactly?”

If you can pitch the employer on your ability to deliver “near-perfect performance” in a specific task that interests them, however, and that will help them become more successful and profitable, then you’ll likely get their full, undivided attention!

Editor’s Note:  I’m honored to mention that one of the principal authors of the StrengthsFinder series, Marcus Buckingham, just started following these posts of mine on Twitter as of yesterday.  Or at least somebody bearing his name did!  Mr. Buckingham, if that’s really you out there, how did I do?  Any insights or criticisms to offer about how I’ve applied your tool to the job search and career planning equation?

StrengthsFinder: Building Credibility

As promised, I’m piggybacking on the post I wrote yesterday in order to shed a little more light on one key aspect of applying your results from the StrengthsFinder instrument — or any other personality profile you might have taken.  I want to provide a little more depth, and specificity, around how to actually build credibility with employers and convince them you truly have the success traits in question.

Why is this important?  Because in many, many years of conducting mock interviews with job seekers, I’ve almost never had somebody successfully “sell me” on the power and importance of an innate talent or personality trait.  Sure, I’ve had hundreds of people tell me that they are extremely detail-oriented, or outgoing, or results-focused, or whatever.  But do I necessary believe them?  Or see how such a quality might trump more tangible work-related qualifications such as skills or experience?  Not usually.  And I daresay most employers and recruiters would say the same.  After you’ve heard these same words used thousands of times, by thousands of candidates, they lose a lot of their mojo.  What’s more, one almost can’t help but acquire a cynical bias around these kinds of personal abilities after coming across so many “detail-oriented” people who have typos on their resumes — or so many quote-unquote “strategic” managers who don’t know what a SWOT analysis is, aren’t able to define the difference between strategy and tactics, and who don’t seem to have anything all that interesting to say about the strategic challenges or opportunities in my (aka the employer’s) market space.

So my point is this.  Unless you’re 100% committed to learning how to sell your natural strengths/gifts/talents in a meaningful and powerful way, and one that has a fighting chance of busting through the crusted-over cliches in the interviewer’s mind, it’s almost best to avoid discussing them altogether.  Stick to safer, more measurable subjects like skills and educational credentials.  If you end up in a situation, however, where you want or need one of your personal strengths to shine, here are some thoughts on how to accomplish this:

1)  First, convince yourself. This first suggestion sounds like a cop-out, I know, but it’s absolutely essential.  To have any hope at all of convincing another human being that you’re truly “one out of a hundred” in terms of some fundamental talent you possess, you first have to believe it, yourself.  Just taking a test and casually musing over the results isn’t enough.  You need to corroborate the assessment results with real-life examples of how you’ve put this strength into action, as well as feedback from people who know you well and some supporting data gleaned from other personality profiles.  You can’t have a smidgen of doubt about the talents that make up the “authentic you” or you’ll get easily picked apart when it comes time for employer cross-examination.

2)  Hand the employer a printed copy of your StrengthsFinder results. The fundamental secret behind most personality tests is that they essentially tell us things that we already know or suspect about ourselves, but for some reason known only to psychologists and neurobiologists, there’s something magically “validating” about seeing this same data presented on paper.  Information is always more credible when it’s printed out.  So if you really want to engage an employer in a discussion of how your personal strengths might add value to your future job performance, try using handouts.  If nothing else, you’ll stand out from the crowd.  And once the hiring manager sees that an “actual scientific test” confirms you have the traits you claim, the psychological effect described above might exert its irresistible influence on them, as well!

3)  Arm yourself with relevant accomplishment stories. This one isn’t all that original, since every interviewing book on the planet instructs job hunters to have some of their best “success stories” on hand, practiced, and ready to share with employers.  What you may not have done in the past, however, is examine how your fundamental personality traits (as opposed to skills or knowledge) have played a role in your past successes.  So apply this strengths-based layer of thinking to each of your past accomplishments, using whatever storytelling model you’re comfortable with (e.g. CAR, PAR, OAR, STAR; every career firm has some model they recommend that people use to break their stories down into an initial Challenge/Problem/Opportunity, followed by corresponding Actions and Results.)

4)  Offer references, endorsements, or work samples to back up your claims. If you tell me that you’re highly Empathic and extremely good at understanding the needs of the people around you, that’s nice.  I’ll take you at your word and assume you might be slightly more developed in this area than the average person who interacts with the world from a more self-absorbed perspective.  If you kick things up a notch, however, and supply me with some letters of recommendation and LinkedIn testimonials saying things like “Joe was the best listener of any manager I’ve every worked for” or “Betty had an incredible knack for understanding our customers’ needs, sometimes even better than they did, themselves!” I’ll be MUCH more inclined to give you credit for this talent.  Such evidence might be dismissed as hearsay in a court of law, but as a hiring manager, I’m going to be impressed by somebody who can back up their claims with consistent feedback from those around them.  A work sample or portfolio piece that illustrates your strengths in action can be a real show-stopper, as well!

5)  Contrast your style to that of the “typical” style for a given job role. This one takes a little more finesse, but if you’re somewhat of an underdog for a given position, you might point out how you’d bring a unique and refreshingly different perspective to a job assignment compared to what the employer in question might typically encounter in other candidates.  For example, I suspect that the majority of career counselors out there would rank higher than me on StrengthsFinder attributes like Empathy, Woo, and Relator.  I’m just not a touchy-feely guy, at heart.  Never have been.  And as a result, I fully admit that I’m far from the best available consultant for those job hunters whose primary need is for heavy ongoing infusions of emotional support and non-directive listening.  So instead of pretending to be something I’m not, when explaining my services to people, I emphasize how my core strengths in areas like Intellection, Input, and Ideation allow me to approach the job hunting process from a more objective, marketing-focused angle.   They allow me to help people write compelling job search documents.  And find interesting new outlets for their skills.  And brainstorm creative ways to engage their networking contacts and uncover new target companies.  This approach seems to have worked pretty well for me over the years, and if I come across somebody who needs deeper work than I can offer in assertiveness or confidence-building, I refer them without hesitation to some other coaches in town who I know have greater natural strengths in these areas.

6)  Ask the interviewer to describe their best employees. This technique is something of a “sneak attack” designed to get employers to think a bit outside the box and realize (hopefully!) just how important one’s fundamental strengths, talents, and tendencies are to bottom-line job success.  If you can get them to openly discuss the personality of the top performers in the role you’re targeting, they might disclose some nuggets (“Harriet is our rock star — she’s able to juggle a million different deadlines at once and stay calm as a cucumber the whole time!”) that you can then emphasize, yourself, if you share some of the same strengths, habits, and tendencies that are identified.  You might need to prompt the employer a bit, however, to get good data.  Try asking follow-up questions like “Do you find that your top performers are always the ones who have been in the industry the longest?” and “All other things being equal, what truly separates your superstars from your bottom-of-the-barrel performers?”  And if you want to shoot the moon and risk being even more aggressive, you can ask “Obviously you, yourself, haven’t been in this industry your entire career.  What factors would you say have allowed you to adapt so successfully to this field and your current role?”  It’s a courageous question, for sure, but if you really want to emphasize the importance of natural talent, this line of conversation might be enough to switch the employer’s light bulb on!

7)  Demonstrate your Strengths in the interview itself or via a follow-up exercise. If you’re going to try building the case that you possess some incredibly useful success traits, make sure the employer sees evidence of these in the hiring conversation itself.  If one of your StrengthsFinder themes is Individualization, for example, share some observations regarding the individual people you’ve met during the hiring process, including the receptionist who greeted you in the lobby.  If Responsibility is your claim to fame, arrive at the interview 15 minutes early, fully prepared, and follow-through like clockwork on every subsequent step of the courtship ritual.  If you’re a Positivity person, let your positive energy wash over the stressed-out hiring manager during the interview so that the rest of their day is a little brighter.  All of these behaviors will greatly reinforce the words that you’re mouthing regarding your true nature.  And if the opportunity doesn’t arise to show yourself “at your best” during the interview, ask them for an assignment that will let you prove these things.  If you’re Strategic, in other words, ask whether they’d be interested in having you put together a PowerPoint that provides an objective overview of where you feel their company fits into the market — and where some untapped (and profitable) possibilities might lie.

8)  Pick your battles; don’t try to sell more than one or two strengths at a time. One last mistake I’d point out relates to those interview candidates who claim to be really strong in a particular area, such as team-building, but then can’t resist saying that they’re also the cat’s meow in terms of creativity, accountability, leadership, empathy, and analytical thinking.  Nobody is going to buy this.  While people can be equally strong in multiple areas, without question, the more different areas you try to claim “greatness” around during an interview, the more you’ll water down and weaken your message.  So if you’ve got one or two strengths that are substantially more well-developed than others, stick to them.  Own them.  Focus on getting credit for them and making them uber-relevant to the conversation at hand.  And if you’re one of those fortunate few who happens to have a whole closetful of natural gifts, be smart about it, and isolate/emphasize just those select few that appear most relevant to the opportunity you’re pursuing!

StrengthsFinder: Practical Applications

Can one ever become TOO self-aware?  I mean, to a fault?  It probably wouldn’t be hard to pull off, given the zillions of personality tests and assessment instruments that are available today, ranging from international powerhouses like MBTI (Myers-Briggs) and DiSC to a number of scrappy up-and-comers like the locally-based Core Value Index from Taylor Protocols and Thomas Indicator Profile from CereCore.  Heck, I even took a test years ago called Kingdomality that pegged people into the roles they’d likely play in a medieval village, based on their personality type.  For the record, and oddly enough, I was cast as the Black Knight…

While all of these different instruments have their pros and cons, as well as their ardent followers, I’ll admit that the one personal development tool I’ve found to be more valuable than any other is the StrengthsFinder assessment offered by the Gallup organization — a tool that was popularized, initially, through the best-selling book Now Discover Your Strengths by Donald Clifton and Marcus Buckingham.  This is the only assessment tool I use in my work with clients on a regular basis.  Not only do I love the simplicity and cost of the instrument (buy the book for $20, take the test it contains, and bingo, you’re done!), but I also find that the results it spits out are eerily on target for many people, including myself.  Additionally, unlike many assessments, the StrengthsFinder tool isn’t built around “quadrants” or another such rigid construct where certain personality traits are mutually exclusive by definition (e.g. you can either be introverted OR extroverted) and it also doesn’t make the assumption that only certain personality types can succeed in certain career roles.  I find people to be much more complex than this.  And I know tons of people who have performed like champs in various job roles that wouldn’t typically be associated with their particular personality type.

At any rate, that’s why I love the StrengthsFinder tool.  So if you haven’t taken it, I’d encourage you to do so, and if you happen to believe in your results and buy into the philosophy that Gallup espouses, there are nine different books you can track down that talk further about the tool and its various applications.  I want to take a moment and put my own unique spin on things, however.  I want to discuss how the results from this tool, and similar tools, can actually be harnessed to make a practical difference in the outcome of your job hunt — versus just being one more indulgent, feel-good personal development activity that you ponder for a while, but that you don’t actually end up applying in any productive way.

So here’s a quick list of ideas I’ve come up with in terms of how a person might apply their StrengthsFinder results in “tangible” fashion to the career planning and job-finding process:

1)  List your five StrengthFinder themes on your resume or LinkedIn profile.  Sure, it’s unorthodox, but this step will at least make you stand out from the crowd, and if the recruiter or hiring manager reading your resume is a fellow fan of the tool, you’ll likely get some extra brownie points!  Want to be REALLY wild and crazy?  Add them as a line in your e-mail signature block, as well…

2)  Tailor your job search game plan directly around your core strengths.  If your StrengthsFinder themes provide some keen insight into how you’re wired and the types of activities you’re naturally most successful at, why not apply this information to the method, routine, and strategy of your job search, itself?  While a “Woo” person might have the best success out building relationships at casual networking events, an “Input” or “Analytical” person like myself might avoid embarrassing themselves at such functions and instead focus on gaining publicity via a blog or on-line networking tools — or work on gaining a competitive edge through superior pre-interview research.

3)  Explore career options by searching for jobs that specifically call for your strengths and talents.  While this step can be a little tricky, at first, we ‘re fortunate to have sites at our fingertips today like Indeed.com that contain millions of bytes of real-time occupational data from around the entire country.  Have you tried isolating one of your key strengths, as well as some closely-related synonyms, and then running these keywords through the entire job database to see which career niches relate to them in some way?  Which jobs and careers have a non-obvious requirement for a person with strong Empathy, for example?  Or for an individual naturally oriented to the Connectedness of various things in the world?

4)  Brainstorm some fresh Talent/Skill/Knowledge pairings.  Let’s face facts.  If you’re looking to change careers or increase your marketability for mid-to-senior-level positions, your natural talents alone aren’t going to be enough.  As the NDYS book emphasizes, you have to pair up your natural gifts with some black-and-white skills and educational/knowledge elements before you truly have a “Strength” that companies will value highly (and pay you handsomely) for.  So as an exercise to help with this step, try browsing through the course catalog of your local community college, since these institutions are the best game in town in terms of acquiring new Skill/Knowledge elements.  Along the way, as you flip through the course offerings available, ask yourself “How would my natural Talent for X pair up effectively with the Skill in (or Knowledge of) X, Y, or Z that I could learn through this school?”  You might be surprised at the creative ideas that surface by brainstorming in this outside-the-box way.

5)  Use your StrengthsFinder themes to identify new target company/contact possibilities.  While there are thousands of well-intentioned job seekers out there doing their best to “network” in some capacity, many people still struggle to help the people around them come up with good referral possibilities.  One way to stimulate this thinking is to ask people if they know of companies where a certain Strength is lacking in the organizational culture — and causing problems, as a result — or whether they know of any particular leaders/managers who AREN’T good in a particular area and might value a complementary subordinate on the team.  These questions might sound like “Are you aware of any companies suffering from a lack of Strategic thinking and who might need somebody to help them figure out which products to support going forward — and which to shelve?”  Or “Do you know of any executives who are smart, but tend to avoid conflict, and might therefore value somebody with thick skin (the Command theme) willing to help them hold people accountable and communicate tough decisions?”

6)  Leverage your Strengths to overcome Knowledge/Skill deficiencies.  In cover letters, as well as the interviewing process, you sometimes have little choice but to trot out your natural gifts/talents as a way to offset the lack of “hard skills” and “specific industry experience” you might have for a given assignment.  In my opinion, this is the single greatest benefit the StrengthsFinder tool can potentially contribute to the job search process.  It’s also the hardest to execute.  Hiring managers hear candidates claim to be fast learners, people people, and results-oriented drivers all day long, so will be almost completely closed down to the idea that your natural talents are worthy of important consideration once they learn you don’t possess the full laundry list of skill and knowledge elements they’re seeking.  You’re going to have to sell them HARD on this idea, which takes a fair amount of preparation and practice.  You’re going to have to map out specific ways in which your innate gifts would contribute to success in the job at hand and then convince the employer you truly have these gifts, compared to all the other candidates they’ve met paying lip service to the exact same words.  When you see this done, it’s an amazing thing, but it’s a rare occurrence!  To help with this step, I’m going to be writing a follow-up post shortly that discusses some tips, tricks, and methods you can use to gain more credibility in this area, so stay tuned…

7)  Give your new boss a gift; tell them exactly how to get the best out of you! You’re know you’re going to work again, right?  I mean, despite the conditions out there, you realize it’s a near-impossibility that you’re destined for permanent unemployment?  Given this fact, let’s fast-forward to the first exciting week of your new job.  Assuming your new manager appears to have at least one iota of self-awareness, you might consider entrusting them with a printed copy of your top five StrengthsFinder themes, as well as the pages from the second half of the NDYS book that talk about “how to manage” somebody with your particular orientation.  Tell them that since you’re just getting to know one another, you wanted to give them a cheat sheet about your work style so that you can avoid unnecessary misunderstandings and so they know all the right levers to pull to get the best out of you.  Honestly, if my last boss had kept a copy of my “how to manage this person” results taped to their desk, they could have manipulated me like Pinocchio all day long — to the positive benefit of all concerned!

So for what it’s worth, these are just a few pragmatic ways in which I feel the StrengthsFinder results can be applied for fun and profit as part of your job search adventure.  What other ideas come to mind?  What other applications have you tried, yourselves?  How else can one transport the results from such assessments (StrengthsFinder or otherwise) out of the realm of “academic curiosity” and into the world of “Wow, those test results played a critical role in helping me select a perfect career path — or land my next job”?

Career Q&A: “How Do I Prove I’m Strategic?”

“As part of my job search, I am running into an issue that surprises me and am unsure how to resolve.  I was knocked out of the running for a position because I was told I was not ’strategic’ enough.  I don’t know the best way to handle this.  I feel that I am strategic and that I couldn’t get the results I’ve gotten to date if I weren’t, but I’m having a hard time demonstrating/articulating this in an interview.  (When I ask what “strategy” means to them, I don’t receive very concrete answers, which adds to my confusion.)  If you know of any resources, tips, etc. that could help me demonstrate my strategic thinking ability, it would be most appreciated.  Thanks much!”

This is a great question, and before I launch into my typical long-winded answer, please note that you could plug almost any desirable trait or requested work strength into the advice framework I’ll be spelling out below and the results should be equally effective.  I will admit, though, that the “strategic vs. tactical” debate is one that has a special status in the interview process, since many employers ask for employees to be highly strategic in outlook — and frankly, I’m not always sure they, themselves, could define what they mean by this!

So let’s start there.  If you keep getting the feedback that you’re not strategic enough for certain positions, I’d ask you to first challenge yourself to define the differences between “strategic” and “tactical” in your own mind.  Are you clear on what it means to be strategic?  Do you have a really crisp definition of the concept, yourself, or are the two things kind of running together in fuzzy fashion in your own mind?  Don’t be embarrassed if this is the case.  It’s pretty common.  But if this is a point of vulnerability in terms of you landing your next job, you can’t afford not to have a crystal-clear command of the differences.  So do some research.  For starters, you could check out the definition of strategy here on Wikipedia.  Or you could Google the phrase “strategy vs. tactics” and find all kinds of fascinating discussions on the Internet in terms of the differences between the two, including a blog post here from marketing expert Seth Godin that makes some good points on the subject.

You could even turn to the popular StrengthsFinder assessment for an explanation of what it means to be strategic, since this is one of the 34 personal strengths this tool has singled out in individuals.  According to this well-respected framework, being strategic: “…enables you to sort through the clutter and find the best route. It is not a skill that can be taught. It is a distinct way of thinking, a special perspective on the world at large. This perspective allows you to see patterns where others simply see complexity. Mindful of these patterns, you play out alternative scenarios, always asking, ‘What if this happened? Okay, well what if this happened?’ This recurring question helps you see around the next corner. There you can evaluate accurately the potential obstacles. Guided by where you see each path leading, you start to make selections. You discard the paths that lead nowhere. You discard the paths that lead straight into resistance. You discard the paths that lead into a fog of confusion. You cull and make selections until you arrive at the chosen path — your strategy. Armed with your strategy, you strike forward. This is your Strategic theme at work: “What if?” Select. Strike.

So again, before I’d even start worrying about proving you’re strategic to an employer, I’d make 100% sure you have a solid grasp of what the concept actually means.  Armed with this understanding, you can then go back through your work history and look for examples that will support your claim.  Have you put together complex marketing plans that show how multiple tactical marketing steps will achieve the overall goal?  Have you identified key windows of opportunity in the market or areas where your competitors have a hidden vulnerability?  Have you helped executive teams decide among multiple choices by playing these scenarios out a few years into the future, to see where they would likely lead?  These are the kinds of contributions, to me, that would qualify as strategic in nature.  And another great way to illustrate strategy is to talk about the activities you convinced a company not to pursue, just as much as the ones you got the green light around.  This really shows you’ve got a strategic outlook, versus just engaging in activity for activity’s sake, which is often a hallmark of the tactically-minded individual.

Ultimately, you may not win every employer over.  Some may simply be using the “you’re not strategic enough” excuse as camouflage for some other aspect of your candidacy that they’re not thrilled about.  But if they keep fishing around this issue, or suggesting they’re not seeing enough strategic thinking demonstrated in your background, you have to be ready to immediately address this issue and put it to rest.  So first, get clear on what it actually means.  Even consider clarifying this definition out loud with the employer, before moving further, to ensure the two of you are on the same page.  And then, when the timing’s right, start walking them through a series of your most strategic accomplishments, one by one, until they throw the white flag and say “We’re sorry we ever doubted you!”

Book Review: StrengthsFinder 2.0 (Tom Rath)

During a recent safari to Barnes & Noble, on the hunt for a fresh crop of reading material, I was incredibly pleased to discover that one of my all-time favorite books — Now, Discover Your Strengths — had been complemented with a brand-new sequel, appropriately titled StrengthsFinder 2.0.

For those unfamiliar with the original StrengthsFinder publication, which continues to be a best seller even to this day, the book revolves around a personality assessment that was developed a number of years ago based on research from The Gallup Organization.  Upon buying the Now, Discover Your Strengths book, readers are given a unique access code that allows them to log into the Gallup website, complete the on-line assessment, and learn what their top five “talents” are (out of 34 possibilities) and how these gifts/strengths can be applied to full effect in their work and life.  What’s more, the book itself contains some powerful insights and wake-up calls with regard to how the U.S. culture, in general, tends to focus more on trying to overcome an individual’s weaknesses as opposed to celebrating and capitalizing on their innate strengths, instead.

Now fast forward to 2007, and here’s this handy little companion book that not only allows you to log in and complete the assessment, as well, but contains the latest thinking about the StrengthsFinder concept and how to apply one’s results for maximum effectiveness.  On this latter note, the book not only contains a handy “digest” of all 34 strength descriptions, but also provides specific “ideas for action” around each strength that can help people nurture their talents.  Additionally, on the StrengthsFinder 2.0 website, there are a number of new report options available — and the authors claim that the individual assessment results are now customized to a much deeper degree than those from the original book.

All in all, we believe that this book (and its prequel) are fantastic investments for anybody interested in gaining a deeper understanding of how to reach their full potential — and that it offers rich intellectual dividends both for those going through the StrengthsFinder methodology for the first time, as well as for veteran users of the tool.  And on a surprising note, the author of the book even claims that the results measured by the assessment aren’t actually “strengths” after all, but something else entirely.  As to what this may be, we wont spoil the suspense — you’ll just have to buy the book if you want to find out!